Mimmo Rotella

Aldo Rotella Collection, Catanzaro
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in the 1990s

Milan, Galleria Marconi, Rotella. Décollages 1954-1964, 1986, p. 84, illustrated
Nice, Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Mimmo Rotella. Rétrospective, 1999-2000, p. 63, illustrated
London, Ben Brown Fine Arts, Mimmo Rotella, Early Works 1954-1967, 2007, p. 45, illustrated in colour, p. 68, no. 14, catalogued

Tommaso Trini, Rotella, Milan 1974, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly softer and lighter in the original, with the cream passage in the lower right quadrant along the right edge tending more towards pinkish-cream in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition All irregularities to the paper are inherent to the ageing process of the artist's chosen medium.
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This work is recorded in the Archivio Mimmo Rotella, Milano under number 0018 DC 960/000 and is accompanied by a photo-certificate of authenticity

At the beginning of the Sixties, "the immersion into the venture of mass communication" freed the artist and allowed him to interpret critically the fetishes of production and mass consumption which characterised the years of the economic boom. It was at this time of awareness  for a series of new symbols and iconography that Rotella produced his most "Pop" works, at a juncture when several other artists were investigating the possibilities of advertorial material and symbols as source for their work (for example Mario Schifano and his Cola series).

At this time, the choice of his imagery shifts from "the refusal of existentialism" to an acknowledgment of the contemporary world and of the popular images which inhabit it, aspiring to "a fluid and almost inexpressive circulation of multiplied images." (Germano Celant, Mimmo Rotella, Milan 2007, pp. 37- 40).

 

In his production, Rotella alternates cinematic and media-related themes with political propaganda – such as the series dedicated to Kennedy - of which the present work is a particularly strong example. Here we see two crucial themes of the time being merged, and strong parallels between them drawn. One the one hand, the building of the Berlin Wall, on the other hand the unsettled Italian Political climate around the time of the Elections.

  

Following mass moves across the border, a wall was built around the three western sectors of Berlin during the nights of the 12th to the 13th of August 1961. Initially it consisted of barbed wire but by the 15th of August prefabricated elements of cement and stone started to appear, constituting the first generation of a permanent wall. The wall physically divided the city and transformed the western sector into an island within the eastern territory.

 

The artist here takes the well known theme of the Berlin wall as a symbol of separation, and to some extent disintegration, and powerfully points at the state of affairs within Italian politics at the time making this a snapshot of 1960s Italy.